Westchester’s Need for Eco-friendly Vehicles

The Westchester County Board wishes to set an example for its citizens and met late July to discuss usage of alternative fuel, hybrid or eco-friendly vehicles by county officials under the Green Vehicles Sustainable Savings Act. The meeting was held to ensure vehicles helped the officials carried out their duties without a hitch and the environment was benefited at the same time.

Legislators Ken Jenkins and Catherine Parker introduced the matter in front of the County Council and stressed in the importance of using slow vehicles that did not deliver in terms of mileage or lower emission levels by the County officials. While there are laws in place to prevent regular citizens from using such vehicles that guzzled a lot of oil and polluted the air on a large-scale, the legislators are pushing for these laws to be applied to the town officials too. Taxpayers’ money is also saved in this process. The legislators also pointed out that when it came to making the “air we breathe safer and cleaner”, all measures must be followed and no one should be exempted from their obligations to follow green trends.

While the new legislation aims at saving the environment, it is also focusing on the performance of the County officials. So, high mileage vehicles that have quite good speed are being considered to replace the slow-moving ones. White Plains City has already made such changes and got a certification from Empire Green Fleets program because they included 50 to 75 alternative fueled cars in their fleet of 300 cars apart from promoting the use of other eco-friendly promotional items; the fleet consisting of school buses, regular cars, trucks and other commercial vehicles. Regular gas usage has dropped by 23 percent in the city and green house emission by 12 percent.

Driving Eco-Friendly Vehicles Helps Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

White Plains Mayor Tom Roach supported this new legislation and the board’s Environment and Energy Committee has approved its public hearing too. It remains to be seen if Westchester will follow suit and pass a landmark law to ensure its citizens, animals and plants are inhaling less polluted air and the officials get better cars that help them perform their duties and are examples to the citizens to also use such vehicles. Many cities in the US are banning plastics, helping people and shopkeepers overcome their dependence on those thing plastic bags that are harmful in the long run by promoting reusable bags and rewarding those people who already follow such green measures. Passing such legislation only proves the nation is uniting to tackle environment pollution very seriously.